Public Health

Muscle weighs more than fat and that's why it's sometimes the case where you can maintain the same weight but end up a lot less healthy. In the elderly, this effect becomes even more pronounced and the reverse is true. But the 'take home message' remains as always: diet helps but exercise is going to lead to better overall health. A group of sedentary and overweight older people placed on a four-month exercise program not only became more fit, but burned off more fat, compared to older sedentary people who were placed on a diet but did not exercise. The new study also showed that when older…

Rheumatoid arthritis is often a more painful experience for women than it is for men, though the visible symptoms are the same, and doctors should take more account of these subjective differences when assessing the need for medication, according to findings presented at a congress on gender medicine arranged by Karolinska Institutet. For reasons yet unknown, rheumatoid arthritis is roughly three times more common amongst women than men. Moreover, several studies also suggest that rheumatoid arthritis eventually impairs the life quality of female suffers more than it does that of male…

Arthroscopic surgery is widely accepted as an effective treatment for osteoarthritis of the knee. It's a minimally invasive surgical procedure involving insertion of an arthroscope and other instruments into the joint through small incisions in order to remove cartilage fragments and smooth the joint surfaces. Osteoarthritis is the most common form of arthritis affecting one in ten Canadians and 27 million Americans. A landmark study conducted in London, Canada at The University of Western Ontario and Lawson Health Research Institute shows that a routinely practiced knee surgery is…

Do you ever think you might have a serious problem because you have to check your e-mail about a hundred times a day? Do you get angry or agitated when you can't check your e-mail or send text messages? Excessive e-mailing and text messaging is just one subtype of potential pathological addiction. And some people suffer from excessive gaming. But even if you check e-mail a hundred times a day and play online games 35 hours a week, don't worry: you're probably not pathological yet. "Carl" is an example of a guy who plays online games 35 hours a week. He's a 51 year old Transportation Planner…

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say up to one in four teens in the United States will contract a sexually transmitted disease (STD), and experts believe a major contributing factor is the failure of many teens to use condoms consistently and routinely. A new study provides some insight into some of the factors that influence condom use among teenagers. Researchers from the Bradley Hasbro Children's Research Center and three other institutions surveyed more than 1,400 adolescents and young adults between the ages of 15 and 21 who had unprotected sex in the previous 90 days.…

Infantile spasms are a severe and potentially devastating epilepsy condition affecting children aged typically 4-8 months. Sometimes called West syndrome because it was first described by Dr. William James West in the 1840s, they consist of a sudden jerk followed by stiffening. Each individual seizure usually lasts no more than a second but they occur close together and are most common just after waking up. In a new study appearing in Epilepsia, researchers have found that the ketogenic diet, a high fat, low carbohydrate diet more traditionally used for intractable childhood epilepsy, is an…

Pollution is bad for the lungs but it's also bad for the heart, says a recent study of 48 Boston-area patients, all of whom had coronary artery disease. 24-hour Holter monitors were used to examine electrocardiograms for the conductivity change, called an ST-segment depression, which may indicate inadequate blood flow to the heart or inflamed heart muscle. The average 24-hour levels for all pollutants included in the analysis were below accepted or proposed National Air Quality Standard thresholds, meaning patients were breathing air considered healthy. Previous studies have documented…

A third of patients have unnecessary tubes (cannulae) inserted when they are in hospital, needlessly exposing them to serious complications such as infection and blood clots, research launched at the British Pharmaceutical Conference (BPC) in Manchester has shown. Pharmacy researchers from Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen also showed that in 71% of patient records there was no documentation of cannula insertion and in 57%, no documentation of cannula removal. Complications associated with intravenous (IV) cannula use include problems with veins (phlebitis), leakage of drugs into tissues…

Ramadan is a Muslim religious observance in which participants do not eat or drink anything from dawn until sunset. Researchers from the departments of Department of Nutrition and Bromatology and Department of Chemistry-Physics of the University of Granada have carried out a study in which they have revealed the need of counterbalancing the diet of the population who follow Ramadan. According to the collected data, in this period of time macronutrient consumption levels are not appropriate if compared with the reference recommendations. The number of daily ingestions drops to 2 or 3, with…

Women with hormone-receptor positive, metastatic breast cancer may take medications for years to help keep their cancer at bay, but when the tumor becomes resistant to anti-hormonal drugs, treatment with chemotherapy becomes the only option. But a study presented today at the 2008 ASCO Breast Cancer Symposiummay change this approach. Early data suggests a new treatment approach can "re-sensitize" the tumor, allowing anti-hormonal drugs to do their job once again. The strategy being investigated involves breast cancers that are fueled by estrogen—these are called estrogen-receptor or…